Christian Roots Research Articles

Christian roots of capitalist civilization

A conceptual argument is offered for the centrality of religion to the structure of capitalist civilization. This centrality is documented by examples of the role of Christianity in European civilization.

The Ethnic Ethnographer: Judaism in Tristes Tropiques

FIRST CONCEIVED IN 1939 and finally written in 1954-55, Tristes Tropiques ranks as one of the most powerful accounts of modernity in light of the experience of the Second World War. It is also, among Claude Levi-Strauss's writings, the work that most directly engages the issue of the anthropologist's ethnicity. He begins the story of his research travels with a voyage that he describes as extraordinarily symbolic of the future (23): his escape from Vichy France in 1941. Inverting chronology, Levi-Strauss uses his flight from Nazi genocide to introduce his earlier transatlantic voyages, when he pursued his ethnographic research in Brazil among the scattered remnants of societies victimized by several centuries of oppression and neglect. Levi-Strauss thus marks his Jewish background at the opening of his book, which closes with an extended account of the history of religions. In the final two chapters, Levi-Strauss paints a broad picture of the cultural history of the West in terms of the relations between Christianity and its neighbors, Islam and Buddhism. He says nothing at all, however, about Judaism, even though the terms of his argument would logically entail a discussion of the religious roots of Islam and Christianity. Why has he setJudaism as the frame-tale for his work, only to collapse the frame in his conclusion? As Levi-Strauss's opening makes clear, he has no wish to rehearse the defensive cosmopolitanism of a Franz Boas, who aligned himself with a general German cultural heritage rather than a particularistic Jewish paternity. Speaking to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1908, the year of LeviStrauss's birth, Boas actually referred to types distinct from our own when he discussed the recent influx of Eastern European Jews into the United States.2 By contrast, in the dramatic opening chapters of his book, Levi-Strauss pointedly uses his flight from Vichy France to introduce the story of his formation as an ethnographer. The link is actually somewhat tenuous: invited to spend the war teaching at the New School in New York but unable to get a visa, Levi-Strauss uses his ethnographic research as a ruse: he claims to be returning to Brazil to continue his fieldwork. This ploy fails, leading him to a desperate conversation

The Roots of Egyptian Christianity

Il s'agit de questions relatives aux papyrii qui ont une importance dans l'histoire primitive du chritianisme en Egypte. Deux problemes retiennent particulierement son attention: le developpement du christianisme jusqu'a la fin du IV e siecle et les origines du monachisme. L'A. pense que l'evenement decisif pour le developpement du monachisme a ete la revolution de Constantin et la christianisation de la population qui s'est faite selon un processus rapide en Egypte. Parmi ceux qui aspiraient a une plus grande expression de la perfection, certains se sont alors tourne vers des formes ascetiques de piete

Christliche Rechtsüberzeugungen im Kontext einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft

Abstract Although modern society emancipated itself from its Christian roots, Christian motivs continue to be effective even in the realm oflaw. Thus, in the 16. cent., the idea oftoleration had Christian, though not ecclesiastic origins. In a Christian perspective, however, toleration does not entail complete neutrality in all religious matters and on the part of society and legal order such complete neutrality is to be considered delusive. The positive attitude of Christians toward the German constitution is largely bound up with its emphasis on human dignity, which is rooted in the biblical idea of the human person being created in the image of God. In the reality of modern society, on the other hand, personal selfrealization tends to become the fundamental human right, and on certain points (abortion) issues in conflicts with the priority of human dignity. Here, the idea of freedom degenerates into licence, which in a Christian perspective is sin. Another area of particular concern for Christians in the legal system is marriage and family. Here, the author pleads for the Christian emphasis on marriage as basis of the family and indicates its legal consequences.

The Mandaean Appropriation of Jesus' Mother, Miriai

The purpose of this paper is the legend of the Jewess Miriai. Various mandaean texts contain traditions about Miria, a young woman who converts from Judaism to Mandaeism. Her name indicates that she is Jesus' mother, but her association with him is absent in the accounts that portray her as a positive figure. The A. explores Miriai's appearances in Mandaeism, and to deal with the problem: why does she occur in this religion at all? For Mandaeism is a Gnostic system allegedly without Christian roots

The Nag Hammadi Library in English

First published in 1978, Nag Hammadi was widely acclaimed by critics and scholars alike. Containing many of the writings of the Gnostics since the time of Christ, this was the work that launched modern Gnostic studies and exposed a movement whose teachings are in may ways as relevant today as they were sixteen centuries ago. Although some of the texts had appeared in other translations, the 1978 edition was the first and only translation of these ancient and fascinating manuscripts to appear in one volume. This new edition is the result of ten years of additional research, and editorial and critical work. Every translation has been changed or added to; many have been thoroughly revised. Unearthed in 1945 near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, the texts literally begin where the Dead Sea Scrolls end. Their discovery is seen as equally significant, bringing to light a long-hidden well of new information, sources, and insights into early Judaism and the roots of Christianity. Each text is accompanied by a new and expanded introduction. Also included are a revised general introduction and an afterword discussing the modern relevance of Gnosticism, from Voltaire and Blake through Melville and Yeats to Jack Kerouac and science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The translations and introductions to the Nag Hammadi texts are by members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project, which includes such scholars as Helmut Koester, George McRae, and Elaine Pagels.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:TRACING OUR CHRISTIAN ROOTS: Early Christian Spirituality, by Charles KannengiesserTRACING OUR CHRISTIAN ROOTS: Morality and Ethics in Early Christianity, by Jan L. WomerTRACING OUR CHRISTIAN ROOTS: Understandings of the Church, by E. Glenn HinsonTRACING OUR CHRISTIAN ROOTS: ORIGINS TO THE TWELFTH CENTURY, edited by Bernard McGinn, John Meyendorff and Jean LeclercqTWO CONTRIBUTIONS TO MISSION THEOLOGY: A Greater Commission. A Theology for World Mission, by Robert Duncan Culver.TWO CONTRIBUTIONS TO MISSION THEOLOGY: Umkehr und Umdenken. Grundzüge einer Theologie der Mission, by Werner Kohler, edited by Jörg SalaquardaTHE ENCOUNTER IN CHINA: Unfinished Encounter: China and Christianity, by Bob Whyte.THE ENCOUNTER IN CHINA: Chinese Politics and Christian Missions: The Anti‐Christian Movements of 1920–28, by Jessie Gregory Lutz.ANTHROPOLOGY FOR MISSIONARIES: Anthropological Insights for Missionaries, by Paul G. Hiebert.ANTHROPOLOGY FOR MISSIONARIES: Case Studies in Missions, edited by Paul G. and Frances F. Hiebert.GOOD, BUT ARE THEY ALL LIBERATION THEOLOGIANS?: Third World Liberation Theologies — An Introductory Survey, by Dean William Ferm.GOOD, BUT ARE THEY ALL LIBERATION THEOLOGIANS?: Third World Liberation Theologies — A Reader, by Dean William Ferm.GOOD, BUT ARE THEY ALL LIBERATION THEOLOGIANS?: Profiles in Liberation — Thirty‐six Portraits of Third World Theologians, by Dean William Ferm.

The Roots of Egyptian Christianity

The Roots of Egyptian Christianity

The Papacy and War against the ‘Saracens’, 795–1216

recent years numerous studies have appeared on the Western ethic of war and soldiering, some of which have extensively explored the concept of the just war and its roots in Christian thought, especially as expounded by St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) -1 These studies have treated at length the problem of the relationship between just war, holy war, and crusade, but their conclusions are not altogether convincing. They overemphasize the role of the eleventhcentury popes, particularly Gregory VII and Urban II, and they distinguish too sharply between holy war and crusade. Accordingly, the received opinion requires some modification. Building upon the magisterial thesis of Carl Erdmann, historians seem to agree that, from the fifth to the eighth century, given the special conditions in the West, the Augustinian doctrine of the just war could not take root.2 In the disorder created by successive waves of Germanic invasion and settlement, the Church viewed the profession of arms

My Journey in Mission: A Korean-Japanese Woman Pastor's Story

The story of Young Sawa Kim is one of a courageous pastor who has overcome strong sex and cultural barriers to engage in the ministry to which God has called her. She grew up in Korea in a very anti-Japanese environment, but her family had strong Christian roots. Her great-grandmother was an early leader of the Korean church, and her grandmother was a Bible woman. It was through her mother's influence that she was immersed in the Christian faith, and after a life-changing experience at the age of 14, she decided to become a pastor. After studying at Yonsei University and marrying a fellow student, she moved with him to his homeland of Japan. They have since served for a time in Korea, taken graduate studies in the United States, and settled in Japan, where Sawa and her husband serve in separate pastoral ministries.

Book Review: The Roots of Egyptian Christianity

Book Review: The Roots of Egyptian Christianity

The Roots of Egyptian Christianity. Edited by Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring. (Studies in Antiquity and Christianity.) Pp. xxix + 319. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986. 0 8006 3100 5

The Roots of Egyptian Christianity. Edited by Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring. (Studies in Antiquity and Christianity.) Pp. xxix + 319. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986. 0 8006 3100 5 - Volume 38 Issue 2

Being and Seeming: "The White Hotel"

this novel had on them, and their enthusiastic response brought Thomas world-wide attention, including the belated and sometimes grudging respect of his countrymen in England. The excitement generated by the novel stems in part from the author's calculated subversion of twentieth-century science and metaphysics, and in part from his handling of a venerable theme: the multitudinous ways appearance and diverge. The author realizes these ends through a complex layering of fictive elements: he deploys several narrative voices, he doubles or mirrors his plot details, he introduces echoes of myth, and, most importantly, he chronicles the entire course of his central character's psychoanalysis. With its gradual penetrating of the psyche's elaborate and destructive defenses, psychoanalysis is an ideal structural device for a fiction concerning appearance and reality. The Freudian therapist deals with a world of deceptive appearances that he or she must pierce before reaching psychological bedrock. Indeed, the system resembles those forms of philosophical idealism based on the idea-it has roots in Christian, Gnostic, and Neoplatonic thought-that imperfect sensory apparatus makes direct apprehension of a hidden difficult. But Freudian psychoanalysis does not countenance an ultimately transcendental reality. Freud rejected all forms of supernaturalism. Though he saw that the unconscious lies beneath many layers of repression, he resolutely refused to believe that the psychic mechanisms he studied might have ontological or epistemological analogues. Thus in his writings he often refers to a positivistic reality that the healthy mind must recognize and accept. For this principle Freud favored a Greek word, ananke, and his fictional counterpart in Thomas's novel puns on it when he makes Anna G.-he would pronounce the G hard-the case-history pseudonym for Lisa Erdman.

The Christian Roots of Farrell's O'Neill and Carr Novels

The Christian Roots of Farrell's O'Neill and Carr Novels

Prophetic Politics & Political Theory in Latin America

The Theology of Liberation in Latin America has received relatively little attention in the relevant literature as a philosophical and political force. In this article the author assesses the nature and impact of that body of thought and explains its origins, its major principles, its Christian roots, and the reasons for its rejection of certain aspects of liberal democratic thought, particularly of its emphasis on individualism at the expense of the community. He provides a deeper understanding of the relationship of Latin American Catholic thought to the main currents of political thought in the West, in particular to Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Marx.

Christology in the Jewish-Christian Encounter: An Essay-Review of Edward Schillebeeckx Jesuz Het Verhaal van een Levende

Post-Enlightenment critical consciousness, changes in our understanding of man, and strong existential concerns about our own humanity impinge strongly upon any reformulation of christology. One such existential concern is the anti-Semitic roots of Christianity, expressed particularly in christology. Schillebeeckx' book on the formative years of christology is one of the few which takes this problem into consideration. His work is presented as a forum for dealing with anti-Semitism in the christological tradition. Three discussions are presented: Jesus' attitude toward the Torah; models used to interpret Jesus' significance after his death; and the problem of the universality of his message and salvation. Schillebeeckx emphasizes that both Jesus' attitude toward the Torah and the disciples' interpretation of his significance fall within the parameters of Judaism of the time, and that the newness of Christianity results from its selection and combination of Judaic elements available. How is the anti-Semitism to be explained then? The problems of dealing with the anti-Semitism of the Christian tradition are not so much a matter of doctrine (i.e., somehow superseding Jewish tradition) as of how sectarians overemphasize and distort carefully mediated contraries within a tradition. This sectarian distortion had repercussions in eschatological interpretation and in the directions of christological formulations of the ensuing centuries. Undoing the anti-Semitic strands of the Christian tradition will involve ' (Jesus, The Story of One Who Lives) Bloemendaal: Nelisson, 1974. To be published in English translation by Seabury Press. References in parentheses are to Schillebeeckx' book. This essay is based on a paper read in the Jewish-Christian Seminar at the meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Chicago on November 2, 1975. ROBERT SCHREITER (Th. Dr., University of Nijmegen) studied at Nijmegen and Oxford. He is currently Assistant Professor of Doctrinal Studies at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. He also serves on the editorial board of Concilium.

Chrześcijańska Antygona, czyli interpretacja tragedii Sofoklesa dokonana przez Juliusza Osterwę pod wpływem wybuchu II wojny światowej

Christian Antigone
 Sophocles’ Antigone is one of the most famous ancient tragedy in Polish culture and it is also most often translated one into Polish. In 1939/1940 Juliusz Osterwa, famous actor, director and leader of the Reduta theatre, translated Sophocles’ Antigone into Polish. The outbreak of the II World War, that moved Osterwa very deeply, and his ideas of the Christian roots of European culture as well as the ideas of the crisis of spirituality in modern culture, that crystallized at that time, caused that he filled his translation of Greek tragedy, on its every possible level, with as many elements connected with Christian religion as possible. It makes Osterwa’s Antigone one of the units in the long translation chain, in which Greek Antigone becomes Polish Antigone. But most of all it makes Osterwa’s Antigone very significant and characteristic witness of its own time.

Memoirs of Charles J. Darlington . Vol. II: Wilmington, 1916-1925; Woodstown, 1925-1965 (review)

Book Reviews57 Richenda Scott says "young and old came to H.G. ... for help in their personal and intellectual difficulties." In a religious Society that is sometimes blown about by various winds of doctrine his simple faith remained steady and firm. His outstanding quality was steadfastness, "the courage that outrides all momentary weakness." He bore a faithful witness in all seasons to "the essentially Christian character of the Society of Friends and its message" and Maude Brayshaw was surely right when she wrote to him, in 1949, that "we have to thank you as much as anyone if London Yearly Meeting has become steadily more Christian. . . ." When he joined Friends in 1923 he brought a Christ-centered faith with him from his Baptist background. It is largely due to his witness and the witness of others like him that the Society is as Christ-centered as it is. Unfortunately not all those who have thus helped us to recognize our Christian roots have been able to arouse fresh awareness of that which is distinctive in our Quaker heritage. The appeal of Quakerism for H.G. consisted mostly in those elements that are not totally lacking in Free Church Christianity. H.G. was a Christian of the Free Church tradition and he regarded the Society of Friends as a denomination within that tradition. Richenda Scott seems incüned towards this view but this bias, if that is what it is, has not prevented her from giving a balanced and true picture of H. G. Wood as a person and as a thinker. The several pages of camera studies are delightful. An index and a bibliography of H.G.'s published writings would have added to the value of the book, but these are small deficiencies. Richenda Scott is a gifted biographer who has helped us to savour something of the Grace of God in the life of H. G. Wood. Brielle, New JerseyLewis Benson Memoirs of Charles J. Darlington. Vol. II: Wilmington, 1916-1925; Woodstown, 1925-1965. Published by the author's family. 1967. xxix, 239 pages. $1.50. (Copies can be obtained from the Friends Book Store, 302 Arch St., Philadelphia, Pa., 19106 or from Esther Rosenberg, 609 Hillborn Ave., Swarthmore, Pa., 19081.) Having read Volume I of the Memoirs of Charles J. Darlington, which covered the first twenty-two years of his life through his graduation from Swarthmore College, I looked forward with great anticipation to the publication of Volume II, which covers the period when he lived in Wilmington, Delaware and Woodstown, New Jersey. This was when I became acquainted with him and worked along with him in his Quaker activities. From 1916 to 1925 he lived in Wilmington, which was my home until 1921. After his marriage to Marie Bender in November, 1918, he became an active participant in the life of the Friends Meeting in Wilmington, where I was superintendent of the First Day School. From then on we became well acquainted. He tells in this volume of the influences that led to his very fruitful work in the Society of Friends. 58Quaker History In 1925 he and his family moved from Wilmington to Woodstown, where he quicldy became associated with the Friends Meeting there. There is a very complete description of his activities in connection with the Meeting and the religious life of the community. His wife, Marie, died in 1929. He married Eleanor ColUns in 1932 and they continued to live in Woodstown until Charles' death in 1965. In this volume of the Memoirs Charles has described very fully his activity with the Dupont Company at Deep Water Point, New Jersey, community relationships in Woodstown, the many types of Friends activities in Salem Quarterly Meeting and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the American Friends Service Committee, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the National Council of Churches, and other interchurch relationships. He held very important positions in these groups and made a tremendous contribution to them. The Memoirs are a monumental work and those of us who knew Charles Darlington and were his associates in Quaker activities appreciate the great value of this account of his life and work. Media, PennsylvaniaWilliam Eves, 3rd ...

The Teaching of Contempt: The Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism. By Jules Isaac. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1964. 154 pp. $4.00

The Teaching of Contempt: The Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism. By Jules Isaac. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1964. 154 pp. $4.00

The Individualism of the Fourth Gospel

than it is in the present climate of theology. For the'Liberal Protestant' frame of thought it was easy to recognise the kingship of God in each individual who accepted the will of God, but harder to grasp the idea of Christianity as incorporation by baptism into membership of the Body of Christ-a corporate existence, entered upon and maintained sacramentally and institutionally. It is one of the results of the revival of 'biblical theology' that, of the two, the latter emphasis-the corporate and the sacramental--has come to be widely recognised as closer to the roots of authentic Christianity. But this recovery of a theology of the Church has tended to swing the pendulum too far, sometimes actually to distort the picture and to engender an unwarranted suspicion of anything that sounds 'individualistic'. The famous Lucan saying (Lk. xvii 21) about the kingdom of God being ivTO;q utCov is today generally so interpreted as to rescue it from the unacceptable inward and individual sense; or, if there were an acceptable alternative today, it might be to blame 'Luke the Hellene' for introducing an alien individualism into the doctrine of the kingdom. It is almost a slur on a biblical writer-or else on his expositor-if an individualistic note is detected. That may be a caricature of the situation. But if it contains even a modicum of truth, then perhaps it is not untimely to enter a plea for a reappraisal of the Johannine outlook in this particular respect. To that end I offer this essay, uncertain whether it will meet with approval from the distinguished scholar in whose honour it is presented; certain only that I am deeply indebted to him, both for warm personal friendship when I stayed at Erlangen in I952, and for all that I have learnt from the publications he has generously presented to me, including a copy of his important Theologie des